


Something in the Night

by TheBestAtNotVeryNice



Category: Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, Wolverine (Comics)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-02
Updated: 2014-07-13
Packaged: 2018-02-07 02:31:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1881774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBestAtNotVeryNice/pseuds/TheBestAtNotVeryNice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Logan's a big Springsteen fan; something about his stories of redemption, misery and hope speaks to the state of his soul.</p><p>Starting in Team X years, finishing in Alpha Flight. As far as I can make out. Suggestions for accuracy welcome.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1976 - Blinded by the Light

**1976 – Blinded by the Light**

The city didn’t matter. It could have been Pittsburgh, it might have been Philly. The bar didn’t matter either. It was a dive with a jukebox, there may have been some neon bar signs. He remembered the pool table; he remembered being thrown across that later. Otherwise, it was not a memorable place, but it was not a place he had planned on remembering. As for being remembered, that seemed inevitable. It might sometimes be the hair, but it was mostly the attitude, and there was little enough he could do about that by now.

  
The bar was mostly empty on this damp Wednesday evening, and one more morose man in jeans would normally have gone unremarked by all. The newcomer was sitting just six feet from the jukebox, feeding it quarters. No one else in there was wasting their beer money on music, and usually that meant dealer’s choice. But there are only so many times the average barfly can hear the same song. As the familiar clicking meant that all the coins had run through, the Canadian’s chair scraped back.

                “Buddy, give it a rest.”  
                “What’s it to you, bub?”

The lanky figure at the bar turned to give the stranger a second look. The voice had surprised him; deeper, and angrier, and older than he had taken the owner for. The music-lover stepped into the brighter light around the bar counter, and the regular realised his mistake. This was no teenager. If the guy had been taller, he thought, those shoulders might have been intimidating. The stranger simply stepped up to the bar and ordered another beer. The regular dipped his chin, and raised his beer in a salute of recognition. One drinking man to another. The Canadian didn’t respond; he picked up his bottle and slipped back into the shadows with a self-possession and grace that would have made a fighting man nervous. The jukebox hummed back into life in the glow of a newly lit cigar.

The lanky bar occupant was not a fighting man. He swivelled around on his perch, incredulity in his eyes, as the now familiar drum roll and ‘woah-woah-woah’ came tinnily to life.

                “Don’t you know any other songs?”  
                “They don’t _got_ any other songs,” came the gruff response.  
  
The barfly settled into a new position facing away from the bar. The bar staff no longer talked to him in this joint; they’d heard all his stories, in their several variations. The short guy held the potential for entertainment. 

                “Springsteen fan, huh? Hear he’s gonna be the future of rock ‘n’ roll.”  
                “I wouldn’t know, and don’t care. Kid know’s his stuff, that’s all.”  
                “Can’t say I much thought that this music was for old timers like us. But then, I started my dancing days…”  
                “I’m not lookin’ to reminisce here. You got your little bottle of misery over there, I got mine here.”  
  
But the lanky old soak wasn’t the only one who’d noticed the quarters dropping. The clacking of pool balls from the other end of the store-front saloon finally ceased, and the players stopped by the bar for another round. The service wasn’t exactly fast, despite the low turn-out. Without the game to distract them, the younger men seemed to take on a new awareness of their surroundings.  
                “Hey grand-pa,” one of them nudged the old barfly so hard he nearly spilled his beer. “You the one playing the same song on repeat?”  
                “What,” his henchmen joined in, “you can’t read those little numbers on the box properly?”  
                “Maybe he just thinks the guys gotta pretty voice. I ain’t never seen him come in here with a woman.”  
                “Is that it grandpa? You come in here to watch younger men bend over that pool table, you creep?”  
The tone of the young men’s voices became less jocular as the volume rose, and their target curled closer over his beer. They became more insistent, to get the kind of rise that would justify the fight that was inevitably brewing.

The Canadian sat, resting his chin on one hand, eyes closed, trying to finish his cigar in peace. It was no use. The cruel and pointless taunting from the young men was drowning out all the hope another member of their generation had burned onto vinyl. The hope that wretched men who’d never made anything of themselves needed, from a man who – there but by the grace of God, and that raw talent for poetry – would be right alongside them. In the trench, in the steel mill, in the dive bar.

The tallest of the young toughs felt his hand yanked backwards from the old man’s shoulder, before he’d had the chance to pull the pathetic loser from his stool. He turned, twisting his arm away from the steely grip, and his face wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Saturday Night Live sketch; he performed a classic double take – but vertically, rather than on the horizontal.

                “Why don’t you go back to the pool table, kid.”  
                “Why don’t you fuck off and mind your own business, canuck?”  
                “I’d like to, but your noise is ruining my evening.”  
  
The attention of the trio firmly attached to the intense stranger, the barfly made good his escape. No one noticed him go; the few drinkers left in the booths were not yet interested in the fight brewing by the bar. Three youths against one past-his-prime welterweight, their eyes sizing the Canadian by height rather than width.  
  
                “Go back to your pool table, boys. Last warning.”

Logan’s words were undercut by the jukebox ticking once more into the opening bars of _Born to Run_.

                “Is that your doing?” The self-appointed leader of the pack poked a finger toward the jukebox.  
                “What of it?”

The body language of the three guys in front of him shifted, and Logan registered the change. These were not seasoned fighters, they were bored bar brawlers, and already four beers down. He’d wanted a quiet night, a day off to be a regular guy. He suddenly laughed. “Hell”, he thought, “regular guys get into fights all the time. Let’s see what it’s like.”

The tall one came for him first, and Logan easily stepped back to avoid the clumsy swing. Usually, he’d have dropped even lower than his five feet three inches, spread his arms, and unleashed the claws. But not tonight. Tonight, he barrelled back into the fight head first, fists jabbing. The leader of the pack went down easy, unbalanced by his opening swing, he had not been expecting the shorter man to take the initiative. The two men crashed to the ground. His henchmen didn’t miss an opportunity to put the boot into to the cocky canuck whilst he was on the floor. This stopped when he caught the fatter boy's boot and, with a swift upward jerk, simultaneously unbalanced his attacker and helped himself back to his feet. The third lad had hung back, no more than twenty, he shouldn’t have even been in the bar. Logan would have taken pity on him, had it not been for the beer bottle in the kid’s hand and the snarl in his upper lip. Drunk, and mean with it.

Logan shook his head. "Kid could learn a lot from the Boss", he thought, "if only he’d listen." The bottle swung in, and he ducked under it, raining short punches into the kid's ribs. The air barked out of the boy; in a few short puffs he was down with his friends on the floor, gasping. One of the fighters grasped at Logan's leg, and he kicked him off. The whole episode had taken barely more than a minute or two. But those were local boys, and he was a stranger, and a foreigner at that. He wasn’t going to walk away from that so easily. A larger pair of fists gripped his shoulders, and Logan became aware of a small group of drinkers who were less than pleased with his presence in their neighbourhood.

  
Too tired and disappointed with the world to muster much rage, Logan surrendered to the fight with no real urge to win, and nothing to lose. After all, it wasn’t like anyone was going to do any permanent damage here. But, as he went backwards over the pool table, his head bounced hard against the wooden rail.  
                 
                “Alright, enough is enough,” he muttered. His pride was beginning to smart.

Anchoring himself to the pockets of the table, by letting out just a little of the bone spurs in his hands, he drew his knees up to his chest and used both boots to fell the men who would have pulled him back to his feet. Those behind them, aiming to land body blows while he was held captive, fell back out of the way. Retracting his claws, leaving only bloody fists in play, the Wolverine sprung back onto his feet, crouched at the edge of the pool table. The front door was too far away, but he could see a side door to his left at the end of the bar counter. Pushing off from the edge of the table, he takes three men down with him, and rolls right over them, distributing liberal punches in any soft spot he finds. Turning only to free himself of a last grasping hand on his jacket collar, he snarls at the last standing pugilist, who readily backs off.

Through the door, and into the alley.  Logan doubts his opponents think him worth the chase. But he heads off quickly back towards a highway, and streetlights. His head down, walking fast, he fails to spot the man ahead, until he clips him with his elbow.

                “Careful buddy,” the man laughs, “I think I just got your boot.”

Logan stops short, and turns toward the sound of the familiar voice. The man’s feet are spread apart, and one hand anchors him to the wall ahead of him. The smell of warm piss is unmistakable. He looks down, and sure enough the toe of his left boot glistens in the light coming from the streetlight on the highway just ahead. He snorts with disbelief.

                “Came all this way, only to get peed on by the man himself.”

He looks up, and the Boss is grinning at him and doing up his fly. He looks much younger than Logan expected, even under the beard.

                “Did I hear that right, are you in town for the show?”  
                “Yeah. I guess, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

At a loss for anything sensible to say or do, confronted with an emotion he’s not sure he can name, Logan lifts his hand in a sloppy salute, stuffs his hands into his pockets, and ambles off quickly. He isn’t sure what way he’s going, he can’t even remember the name of the fleabag hotel, or the alias he checked in under. He hears the rumble of the tour bus as it passes him, and stops to watch it drive away.

He’s still stood there, five minutes later, as the rain starts to fall. Still trying to think of something, anything, he could have said to the young man who seems to set his soul to music.


	2. 1979 - Adam Raised a Cain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After surviving and escaping the Weapon X program, Wolverine's memories are scrambled. Springsteen's bleak fourth LP brings him a measure of comfort, and he feels less alone in the world. So, he sets out to buy the man a beer. And end's up saving his life. 
> 
> References Bruce's 1979 off-road accident.

1979  
  
Sometimes they call him Weapon X. Never to his face, but he hears them all the same. There's not much he doesn't hear, tell the truth. And the few local Québécois had, by now, learnt that French was no guarantee of privacy within his superhuman earshot. Most people on base find him intimidating enough to only ever call him 'sir'. He’s pretty sure he’s doing a good job, a legitimate job, but something about being a company man has never sat right. He’s not really in a good place, mentally. He’s trying. Hell, even his co-workers seem to be trying. But Logan’s not one for team beers and mutual back slapping. He wonders how can there still be so many bad guys who need killing? He fought the war to end all wars, he fought the Second World War, he’s fought every war going since he was hairy enough to enlist. They all run together in his mind, somehow. Now they tell him they’re fighting a cold war. He smirks unpleasantly at that; they don’t know from cold. Logan’s last clear memory is true cold. Naked in 15◦C, on a snowy slope, certain something was coming after him, but no clue as to where he was going or what he's running from. Nothing has really made sense since. 

So, he’s grateful. Grateful for the job he’s not always sure he should be doing. For those who call themselves friends, though he’s not always sure that he can trust. The Hudsons are good people. It bothers him that they know what he does. But he’s glad they don’t really know what he is. What kind of monster staggers out of the night in a Canadian winter, and lives to tell the tale? What sort of a man has blades stronger than steel surgically implanted and allows himself to be used as a weapon? A broken one.

When it’s warm, he goes hunting. The tie-wearers in the offices call him blood-thirsty, and congratulate themselves on helping him sharpen his instincts. But Logan doesn’t kill the bears he stalks through the Rockies, or the moose closer to home. There’s no skill in the kill, it’s all in the hunt. Out in the mountains he can forget about the world of men, and the endless petty wars. Sometimes he thinks about just staying there, setting up camp at the edge of the civilised world. But after a few days, once the Wolverine has tuned into the massive silence of the firs, there isn’t enough static out there in the wild to drown out the echoes of civilisation in his brain. Nightmares, ghost memories that flicker just at the edge of consciousness. Logan is fairly certain that he was born a man, not a beast. But he is equally sure that at some point he became a monster.

Between missions he gets drunk. When it's too cold to hunt, when he hasn't got enough time to get clear of so-called civilization, a bottle of whiskey works to put him to sleep. But he still wakes up sweating, claws out, his head full of gore and someone else's voice. But this morning, it's a new voice he can hear. A voice that sounds familiar, but Logan's pretty sure that's just because it sounds like him. Well, him if he could sing. This rasping voice is singing about 'a notion deep inside, that it ain't no sin to be glad your alive.' He sits bolt upright at that, and lunges for the clock radio. He remembers, just in time, to retract the blades in his fists, and reaches for the volume control. There are only seconds of the song left to play, but it's enough. The radio station goes into an advertisement for trucks, and Logan sits on the edge of his bed in a tangle of sheets, with the machine clutched between his fists, waiting. But the DJ, when he returns, doesn't tell him about the songs he's already played, he's talking about what comes up next. He hurls the tinny voice to the floor, where it continues to squawk. He stamps it into silence on the way to the shower where, much to his neighbour's surprise and chagrin, he sings. Kind of.

The song haunts him for a week. He finds himself humming the riff under his breath on cold rooftops as he lurks, in the shower watching pink-tinged water wash away someone else's blood. Eventually, he can take it no more. He heads into the nearest town and finds a record store. The bored girl behind the cash desk asks if she can help.   

"I hope so, kid. I heard a thing. On the radio. I don't know what it's called."

She sighs, and sets down her music paper. 

"Can you sing it?"

"Do I look like I sing? No. Guy's got a gruff voice, there's a piano."

"Uh huh. Is it a love song, is it country? What's it about?"

Now there was a question. What was it about? He'd heard just a few lines. It was about being alive. About being grateful for that fact, if none other. It was about being angry.

"There's... something about broken hearts, but..." Logan ran his hand back through his hair, and looked anywhere but at that teenager. "Bad Lands. Those are the words."

"Got it. Springsteen." She sighs with relief. She wished all songs had their titles in their lyrics sometimes. She looks back at the short guy with the sideburns; she should have guessed. "You want the single, or the record it comes from?"

Darkness on the Edge of Town. Logan sat with the record sleeve in his hands, in the same position he'd held the radio just a few days before. The kid on the cover looked familiar, but he couldn't place him. But then, he looked like any one of the lurking streethoods used as foot soldiers and informers by the kind of asshole Department H tried to shut down. He had that bored, hopeless look to him. But this was no teenager screaming at the unfairness of the world. No, these songs said "sure, the world's a mess, you're a mess. And what are you gonna do about it, bub?" You walk streets of fire, that's what you do, Logan.  

The relief is palpable when the thaw begins, and a certain government agent announces his intention to set out for his spring hunting trip. It was a silent relief, communicated by eyebrow and lip-twitch. No-one was willing to step up and directly ask the Wolverine to turn his music down. He knew he was tracked, watched, whenever he left the base on these trips. He was too good an investment to be allowed to roam completely freely. Somehow, though, this time the watching bothered him. Quebec just didn't seem big enough. He roams south, and further south, setting a pace that even his usual handlers weren't expecting. Even Logan himself isn't fully aware of having a final destination in mind. When he crosses the border over the St. Lawrence River, he's barely thought about being in New York state specifically, he simply registers that he, and any agent keeping tabs on him, are no longer guaranteed legal immunity over any fight that broke out. He'd never much bothered with hunting permits, anyhow. Only when he finds himself, small pack slung over his shoulder, following the Hudson through Yonkers does Logan allow himself to think about what he's doing. Looking for the guy who wrote those words, who sings like the truth is being forcibly ripped out of him.

Logan had soon returned to that record store back in Quebec. He had every LP this Springsteen fellow had made. The first two he didn't much mind. The third held promise, and stirred one of the many mangled memories in his head. He played it sparingly. It was the most recent one, the first he'd heard, that he returned to almost daily. He found its abrasive swagger soothing. He might be a loner, but he was not alone. He'd tried a couple of times to write a letter. Thought he'd send it care of the recording studio. But the paper always ended up screwed into a ball, more corrections than words, and thrown into a fire. He was not a wordsmith. He wondered why he was bothering to try and tell the younger man what he clearly already knew. What would his letter do, other than confirm that there was one more screwed up guy trying to make things right in the world? He just wanted to buy the guy a beer, maybe say thank you. But he wasn't this kid's uncle, to stick five dollars in a cheap card.   

So, here he was. Hiking all the way down the damn Adirondacks to buy a guy a beer. Must be going crazy. Finding the guy wasn't something Logan was worried about. Tracking was what he was good at. At the nicer end of his very particular skill set. He had the recording studio address in Manhattan. The city was also a good place to lose the Department H lurkers. They'd sent humans, rather than mutants. He'd known from the scent. They were used to his hunting trips being predictable, they were probably filing frantic reports and calling for mutant back up. He grinned at the thought that they might freak out and think he was hunting human prey. The recognition that suits would be all too likely believe such a report wiped his good humour away quickly. He'd worry about that later.

It took three days of lurking and listening around the Power Station studios before he picked up a lead, he heard a guy mention Telegraph Hill, New Jersey. It wasn't a place, it was a road. And on it, he struck gold. The E-Street band had set up an impromptu studio, just a jam space really with a microphone or two, in a barn. In the early light after dawn, he could see the place was pretty empty. It was clear no-one was expecting to work in there that day. But he'd always enjoyed the thrill of the chase more than any encounter he'd yet found at the end of it. All the Wolverine needed was a scent, and the place was littered with the band members personal effects. He worked his way around the room; a jacket here, a hat there. He would know when it felt right. He worked swiftly, breathing deeply, then discarding: too much hair product, women's perfume, cheap cigarettes, slight trace of cocaine. When he found it he stopped dead. The whole sofa was pungent with it, and had clearly been used as a bed recently. He picked up a discarded over-shirt and breathed again; motorcycle oil on the cuffs, hair cream on the collar, nothing special dime-store deodorant. But under all that, was the scent of the man who knew. And, somehow, it was a good scent. The shirt went into his pack.

He tracked the scent, a recent trail, following tracks from multiple vehicles, till he came upon a garage near a house. There was a space at the end, where something usually stood beside a basic work bench. It wasn't the tidiest of spaces. From the traces of oil and gravel, Logan thought a dirt bike might be missing. Some kind of off-roader. Logan's mood was improving. This hunt was actually starting to be a challenge. He was tempted to 'borrow' the road bike that belonged to his quarry, to track the man on his own machine. If this had been a mission, he'd have done just that. But he was a private citizen on foreign soil, he wasn't risking arrest. Besides, this guy Bruce might not see the funny side. Judging from the tracks outside the front of the garage, the off-roader had not been ridden away, but loaded into a larger vehicle. This suggested that the man's favoured off-road spot was not simply his back yard, and that he might have a riding buddy. Logan lit a cigar as he thought about how he was going to track the larger vehicle. Standing in the warmer sun nearly twenty degrees south of his starting point, he looked around and envied the lifestyle of this man he was beginning to think of as, well, maybe a brother. A quiet place to call his own, a retreat surrounded by friends and colleagues, and a calling. He was the very best at what he did, this Springsteen, and what he did, well, that was worth something. He closed up the garage, leaving everything as it was, and started the walk back to the highway.

"Can I help you?"

Logan had recognised the big guy driving, as he approached from the road, as the sax player. He was ready with a close-lipped smile and an easy lie. The man seemed friendly. 

"I heard there was some work they wanted done. But there's no-one home. Guess he took that bike out for a run after all."

"Haven't seen you around in a long time."

Now that was unexpected. Logan shrugged it off. There were always things he couldn't remember.

"I've been back across the border."

"Well, the boss was headed the opposite way."

"Long way to go for some sport," Logan muttered to himself.

"I doubt he went out of state." 

The shift of his hands on the wheel, as he reached for the brake, told Logan the conversation was over, and he stepped aside, a lazy salute signalling his goodbye. To his surprise, the sax player grinned and returned the salute. Logan continued back to the highway, and then reached into his pack for his map. This was not country he knew well, but it was pretty suburban; locating suitable terrain for off-roading south of his current location would not be hard.

The short-statured mutant made fast work of scouting the parks and wildernesses left in New Jersey. He barely registered the near constant presence of a helicopter in the sky above, beyond the irritating whirr of the blades; after all, there were a large number of military bases in the state, and none of them were of current interest to him. He had a clear scent to track, and a clear picture of his quarry in mind. He picked up the scent he was after, weak but certain, in a parking lot at the edge of a forest just over one hundred kliks south. The day had been warm, but the afternoon was rapidly cooling toward evening. The Wolverine grinned at the prospect of a twilight hunt, his favourite time, when the glare of the over-head sun was gone. He stashed his pack, and set off into the trees. The scent got stronger, interlaced with the distinctive oil/petrol mix of the off-road bikes engines. He could hear an engine in the distance now, and it was coming back towards him; making the return journey to the parking lot. Logan pulled up short. He suddenly realised, now that the hunt was nearing it's close, that he had no idea what he was really hunting.This was no longer a trek to buy a man a beer. In seconds, he had pulled himself into the nearest tree. He watched for the bike to come past below, but instead he heard the motor whine and strain suddenly: brakes were being applied. But too late. The sound of the impact jolted right down his spine as he winced. And then he caught a new scent on the wind. Blood.

He was on the ground and running before his conscious mind even registered the descent pattern through the branches. At the site of the accident he could see instantly what had happened. The bike had hit a tree, at some speed, and the leg of its rider was caught between the two. Resisting his first instinct, to tear the bike off the top of the man underneath, he instead went to assess the damage. The leg looked bad, and was in need of a tourniquet and a medic, in that order. He pulled the old shirt out of his pack, and ripped neat strips from the hem. An agonized groan informed him that the unfortunate rider was still conscious. He looked up from his work, and felt the jolt of recognition as his eyes met those of the man he'd been tracking for days.

"Hey, buddy. You're gonna be ok. I got this."

"I... That... hurts like holy hell." The voice is softer, higher, younger, than Logan's expecting. 

"Yup. You tore through some ligament there, it's a mess, I ain't gonna lie." 

With the tourniquet on tight, Logan thought it a good time to try and move the bike way from the body. But there was fabric caught in the chain. He moved himself over so that his shoulders blocked the man's view of his own leg. 

"You don't wanna watch this." He unsheathed a couple of inches of claw, and began to cut away the scraps of pants material caught in the machine. To distract the patient he continued talking. "I'm Logan."

"I know, man." Bruce muttered through gritted teeth. "I didn't hit my head, ya know. It might have been a while, but I'm not gonna forget that ... hair."

"You got a riding buddy somewhere out here?" 

"Nope. Kinda stupid, ya know? I'm damn lucky someone heard that crash."

Logan finished with the fabric, and moved the bike off the wound. Typical, the machine was in better repair than the man beneath. Barely a scratch. He tipped it over away from him in annoyance. 

"You're stronger than you look. I always thought you were more likely a carpenter than nurse!"

Logan snorted through both nostrils.

"Nurse! Do you want my help? A little bit of combat triage is all I'm offering."

"What? You ain't going to mop fevered brows?"

"We get you to the hospital without major blood loss, we'll celebrate with a sponge bath."

His patient let out a chuckle of laughter. It's not a harsh bark like his own laughter, like Logan was anticipating. It's breathy, gentle, like its choking out against his better judgement.

"We gotta get you up and outta here, keep that leg above your heart if possible."

Logan slings one arm under the guy's back, and the other under his knees to lift him clear of the ground. Keeping the head low, and the feet high, to reduce the shock and stem the blood spilling out of the wounds. He warned him it would hurt, but the howl of agony makes him feel more guilty than any pain he's ever intentionally inflicted. He tries to walk carefully, watching the ground to ensure the way is smooth. But he keeps looking back at the face hanging over his left arm; at once so familiar, and yet that of a stranger. The smell of the blood was strong, but the continued trauma was taking its toll on the musician; the sweat pouring off him carried its own scent into Logan with every breath. The path through the trees seemed far longer than it had as he travelled it in the opposite direction. Logan couldn't remember the last time he had moved this slowly voluntarily. He dropped his eyes to his passenger again.  
  
"Hey, man. You need to stay awake here. It's shock. Talk. Bruce? Hey!"  
  
"Talk? Say what? Oh god, my leg?"  
  
"Good, keep making jokes. Anything."  
  
"Okay. I haven't seen you in, over a year? You show up and, like, save my life. And, ya know, I realise, I have no idea who you are. You were just a guy who liked my music. Ya know. Showed up. Guess you got good timing with the, uh, showing up."  
  
It takes him a while to get these simple sentences out. And it takes Logan almost as long to realise that this is just a very relaxed conversational style, that the kid isn't lapsing into shock. Springsteen stutters, pauses, considers. His phrasing is clumsy, ordinary. Logan is overwhelmed by the urge to protect this very fragile seeming man, slight and physically damaged. A man so uncertain that he doesn't even know where his sentences are going to end when he starts them. Logan was expecting a brother in arms, swaggering, confident of his abilities, ready to take on the world. He's not sure what he's found. But it's literally making him catch his breath.

The tree line ahead is thinning, and he can see a number of people moving in the parking lot beyond. Moving in a very definite search pattern. This is unexpected, and probably unwelcome. He can't protect Bruce and carry him at the same time, that's a biological impossibility given the location of his best weaponry. They're looking for him. Well, they're looking for Weapon X.

"Hey man, I gotta go."  
  
"Go? Where? I, uh, don't leave me here. I can't walk."  
  
"Look, there's guys in that lot. They're coming this way. They'll help. But, trust me, they are not my friends."  
  
"But I've gotta trust them?"  
  
"No. Trust me." He set his quarry down under a tree. He dropped to his haunches in front of the younger man. "You're gonna be fine, buddy. I'll see you soon. I'll make sure I check in. But, I _really_ have to go. I really only came to say thanks." 

Without looking back, Logan takes to his heel. He knows he'll make it back to the border, about 600 kliks, within 24 hours. Even factoring in some sleep. He's glad night will fall soon, and he can make it back to the city under the cover of the darkness. They won't search by copter at night, too public a spectacle.  
  
The search patrol find the injured man under a tree very quickly. They keep asking Bruce about some monster with claws, and he just starts laughing. The shock is finally setting in, and he's feeling hot and faint. They have an army medic there, and he keeps using phrases like 'lacerations to the clothing around the wound', 'consistent with known M.O.'. The patrol seem very nervous indeed. But Bruce has better things to think about in the ambulance than their questions. By the time someone gets him some painkillers at the hospital, he's convinced that the army are helping the forestry commission with a wildlife problem. But he's never seen a wolverine in Jersey. 


	3. 1981 - The Ties that Bind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Describing a timeline starting directly after the last chapter ends.

Government programs change, team members change, mission objectives change: but Logan doesn’t. There’s an empty inevitability to even his greatest success. Nothing is challenging, because there’s nothing at stake; if he’s dying, he knows he’ll be coming back. If injured, he just has to live through the pain, and year-on-year, that word means little and less. At least, physically. The poet says it’s better to have loved and lost, the mercenary disagrees. You can only lose so much, so many times. F’r example, he’s lost Silver Fox twice. There’s no coming back from crap like that. Emotionally, you just shut down. Not caring makes working with assholes like Creed easier. Logan really only has what they term in his trade ‘known associates’, but sometimes everyone needs a friend. He only has one of those. And friend isn’t the word Logan uses. That, he mostly reserves for sarcasm. It’s too raw, too blunt, and too trusting. Buddy serves instead; a little more casual, no strings attached.

He had no idea how he met the musician. First clear memory he’d got was just over three years old. In some ways, it’s easier, knowing that his buddy knows his memory is shot to hell. He’s not held responsible for the gaps, and he can walk away from anything too painful, too close. But it’s a good memory, that first meeting. He wasn’t able to make good on the promise to check back in as soon as he would have liked. He hadn’t been too subtle in those days in trying to ditch his colleagues and handlers. But now, he got a little more leeway. They were pretty sure he was a g-man just like them. And frankly, Logan wasn’t sure that he wasn’t. He took a level of pride in his work that was for sure. Not that he wanted to boast about it with outsiders, but he held his reputation among those in the know.

Having saved the man’s life, getting back in touch was pretty easy; he had a clear purpose for the communication, to gather information. That was the kind of conversation Logan was good at, the exchange of information. But his usual method of asking was a little blunt. He’d been on personal lock-down for so long, fielding mission reports of such selectively edited truth, that he ‘d damn near forgotten that the purpose of most human communication was about getting to know a person better. It wasn't until nearly five weeks after the bike accident that he’d managed to drop back across the border and check on the patient’s progress. He’d just turned up, ghosting through the night to the barn like building Bruce and his band used as a practice studio. He waited until the band leader was the only occupant; laying on the sofa with a magazine.

“These may be a little late”, he said, dropping a bunch of grapes in a paper bag into the man’s lap.

Bruce chuckled, surprised at the arrival, but not shocked. “I wondered when you were going to show up, ya know. You don’t seem like the type to go an’ save a man’s life, an’ then, ya know, disappear on him.”

“That’s because I’m not usually the type whose saving the guy’s life.” Logan was shocked with the ease at which that little truth had slipped out, and he broke eye contact to stare around the makeshift studio as if he didn’t already have it mapped in his memory .

“That’s the impression those military types were trying to give.”

Logan waited it out, there wasn’t much he could say in his own defence. Not much he wanted to say: he wanted to be honest with someone.

“I’m guessing you served, may be it messed you up some, ya know? S’cool. Most of what those guys try and push on you, on me, it’s just jive. You know?”

“I’m not gonna disagree with you on that, bub. I’m no saint. But I’m not exactly a soldier anymore.” Logan coughed awkwardly and felt, for the first time in years, about the age he appeared rather than the age he actually was. “I can’t talk about what I do. But, I wanted to talk to you about what you do.”

Bruce struggled into a more upright position against the sofa arm, and leaned over to gesture at the floor, his voice muffled by the sofa back; “You reach those beers up here, and we’ll talk. Be like old times.”

And it was. Somehow, even though Logan couldn’t remember old times, they fell into an easy rhythm. It was all music, at least that first night. Bruce knew music Logan hadn’t heard in years, since it had been playing on phonographs the first time around. And he owned new records Logan hadn’t yet heard. And there they sat, in companionable silence, sharing a sofa and a beer, letting Arlo Guthrie tell it like it was. Apart from the fact that he was always made to smoke outside, being around this boy and his band was the closest Logan felt to home. He liked waking in the half light of dawn, stiff on an unfamiliar sofa or chair, safe in the knowledge that no-one in the room meant him harm. He liked just being there. That summer, with the band rehearsing material for a new album, there was no touring. Logan always knew where to find them on the east coast, and every so often, usually on the way back from a mission, he would drop by the house or into a bar where Bruce was drinking, like any casual local friend. He likes to be ‘off-grid’ for those trips, though he’s fairly sure that someone has an idea of what he’s doing. Hopefully, they just think he’s catching a concert. He makes no secret that he listens to Springsteen’s records. Nothing out of character there, after all. But he’d rather they not delve too deeply; people Logan likes end up dead. So far, Bruce has survived over three years, possibly longer. Logan wishes he could remember; it took more and more effort to sustain a trust based on misinformation and half-truths. The longer you know someone, the more pieces of the puzzle they put together.

It'd been so long since he'd wanted to spend that much time with anyone, and even Logan would admit that eight hours every few weeks was not an excessive amount of time to spend in anyone's company. Except maybe Wade. He'd forgotten what it was like to have someone smile when he entered a room, ask him how he was. He was fascinated by the contradiction between the young man's gentle manner, his thoughtful mumble in conversation, and this clear, strong, harsh vision he had. The man on the outside Logan wanted to protect, to encourage, to steer towards the better, finer things in life. But the man on the inside, the growling presence who wrote about misery, poverty and struggle had already looked into darkness of the human soul and found it wanting. So, some nights they sat in the dark talking about how the world should be, and how it wasn't. Other days, they went out for beers, listened to local bands whoop it up, and tried to pick up Jersey girls in denim shorts. And the longer he stayed, the longer he wanted to stay. The more Bruce talked to him, the more he wanted to listen, to know. He listened less and less to the songs that had brought him to this new relationship. He wasn't so angry, so drained, so in need of hope that men like him were not alone. He no longer believed that we has without options, doomed to an endless repetition of meaningless action controlled by others. And when he arrived early enough on his visits to Jersey to catch the end of the band rehearsing, he was glad to hear the upbeat tempos, jangling pop guitar riffs, and lyrics celebrating the lighter side of Americana - a homage to the Cadillac rather than the broken-down men who'd built her. It was music to dance to, if either of them could have actually danced with any skill. For Bruce, the recording sessions for his new album seemed to run on and on, and the decisions about the album's tracklisting circled endlessly. And Logan, well, Logan's job was simply not very nice. But, life was still good.

Two summers passed, in a kind of holding pattern. The same album being worked on, the same bars drunk in, the same guys in the same jeans laughing together. It wasn't real life, it was a life that almost could be, if everything was always as it appears on the surface. But in the autumn a double album was ready to be released, and the promotional tour was scheduled to begin.

"I'm gonna miss this, being on the road, ya know." Bruce said more to his beer than to Logan.

"Guess you don't get that many days off", Logan responded. Like most of their recent conversations, there was no clear subject, just a series of observations and jokes that skirted around the immediacy of their experience.

"That, sure. And, apart from the band, the people I'd want to have a beer with live round here, ya know."

Logan had never told anyone exactly how far he travelled just to drink beer with the guys currently sitting around waiting for the next band to start playing on the small stage of the down-at-heel shore bar. His friend had no expectation that they would see each other in the coming months. The US mainland tour would not end until the spring, and then it would move across the ocean to Europe. The holding pattern was broken. They sat in silence, neither able to communicate just what this might mean to them. There was no exchange of phone numbers; Logan had never needed civilian communications of that kind, and it had never been part of their routine.

Logan convinced himself, for the first few weeks, that life was no different. He often went weeks without a trip down south. But, having the choice of whether to visit or not made all the difference. Once again, Logan felt that he was returning to the world in which his every action was prescribed and circumscribed. He dug out the older songs that spoke of helpless anger, but he couldn't listen without the constant nagging knowledge that things had been, were different now. He took a trip down to one of his regular spots to drink a beer in a bar, as though the E-street boys might walk in at any minute. For an hour or so, it felt the same. Like waiting for a friend who was simply late. But a drink or two alone to clear your head is one thing, sitting all night steadily getting drunk is quite another. By the time he stood up off his bar stool to leave, Logan realised that he no longer had perfect control over his legs. There was no way he was in any condition to trek north on a winter night. He wouldn't even admit to himself that he had a direction in mind when he left the bar, but he knew where he was going to sleep that night. It was, for any normal human, a long walk to Telegraph Hill. It took Logan under an hour, even with so much beer sloshing through his system.

He woke as the sun rose, stretched out on an old rug, having used his old leather jacket as a pillow. He breathed deeply of familiar smells, of safety and security. And something else. He sat up quickly. There was no one there, and he had plenty of time to leave before he would likely even encounter a car on the road back to the city. But there was a scent that bothered him. As familiar as the must of the rugs and walls around him, but something about this smell caught at his memory, nagged in his mind. He prowled the building, but couldn't initially pin it down. It was stronger in some places. One of these was by the old sofa. He crouched down and inhaled deeply, closing his eyes and focusing his attention, glad he didn't really experience what others reported as a hangover. Down the back, under the cushions of the seat, into the springs, he found a t-shirt. He stared at the grey cotton, this ordinary item that for some reason had exerted such a pull on his senses. What was it about this old piece of clothing? He raised it closer to his face and breathed deeply again. It was his. Logan wasn't even aware that he had memorised the man's smell. It was no longer just a t-shirt, it was a key to a raft of memories and feelings that were associated with that particular scent, hidden deep in his subconscious. Moments he hadn't noticed at the time, from a year or more before, that rose to the surface of his mind as clearly as the events of the day before. And as he breathed, he realised that he was remembering things he hadn't even known he had forgotten. Things that had gone missing from his mind, parts of the lost years that remained black, unchartered territory in his head.

Back in his quarters, Logan was unsure what to do with the shirt. He thought he knew why he'd picked it up, but he was certain no-one else would understand. Not that he regularly entertained guests, but a slim fit meant that he was clearly not its owner. It ended up under his mattress. He wasn't sure which he felt more uncomfortable about - that he hid the thing, or that he thought he had to hide the thing. Any chance he got, he sat with it in his hands, eyes closed, rebuilding the landscape of his mind. He didn't just remember Bruce, but where he'd been when he met him, and what he'd been doing. Philly. Pittsburg. St. Louis. To the band he was just a very keen fan, a guy who waved at the tour bus and bought them a beer if he saw them after a show. He'd been to a lot of cities. He'd killed people in a lot of cities. He wasn't exactly surprised by the memories he recovered, and they didn't seem to tell him anything he didn't already know about himself. What had seemed like an open door, was really just a window into a little walled yard. By mid-winter the old shirt was left under the mattress undisturbed. But Logan still knew it was there. He was fairly sure it had nothing more to tell him, and yet it remained where it was. He could now breathe deeply when he returned to sleep; these were no longer just assigned quarters, it was his place.

**********************************

The incident in Toronto wasn't good for anyone involved. What should have been a simple info gathering trip went south very quickly. For a start, the Wolverine's heightened senses told him that man they were tailing was certainly not who he said he was. Almost every sentence contained a lie. But the lies were good, clever, and well-informed. This was a professional liar. And something about his scent was irritatingly familiar to Logan, it worried at the edges of the dark space in his head. He was instructed to carry on and complete the mission. He wondered what the point of recruiting people with a skill-set like his was, when they ignored his recommendations. But it wasn't his deduction they wanted here, it was his strength and durability. Why send someone who might die, when you can send someone who can't? He was wasting his time with a simple find and collect.

Except he wasn't. Professional liars are often wary, and even without mutant sense enhancement often know when they are being watched. The Wolverine was made, and they were waiting for him. It took all his strength and agility to get out and away across the roof. But they'd followed, and that was how he'd ended up with the bullet in his back.  
  
They'd done their research. They apparently knew things about him that Logan didn't know himself. They knew how to hurt him. Given that they had fired just as he'd leapt for the next building, he wondered just where they had been aiming. He had a sneaking suspicion that it had been his head. And this was no ordinary bullet. For a start, the damned thing wasn't coming out. Usually, his body rejected projectiles; forcing them out as the flesh healed itself. This thing was lodged in the muscles below his left shoulder, just where the world's worst itches usually develop. Now he was bleeding in a parking lot, in a busy city, in the middle of the night. He was untracked, but also untrackable. He had no back up. Trusting no-one and nothing about this job any longer, Logan was loath to return to his support team. They had ignored his recommendations about the contact, what if this technology was part of the deal to be made? Were his own team actively seeking the technology that could hurt or kill mutants like him? Or maybe not _like_ him, maybe just him. Maybe they thought that they didn't have enough control. He'd possibly given them a little too much evidence of independent thought in the previous months. Fuzzy with pain and blood loss, Logan thought about the independent actions he had taken. And a memory stirred. He had a friend in this city. Not an associate who might be interested in the bullet itself, not a colleague who might turn out to be anything but. A real, actual friend. Bruce and his band were playing Maple Leaf Gardens.  

At two o'clock in the morning, in a freezing January night, no hotel guest expects a knock on their window. The first set of three taps got no response, and Logan worried that the curtains muffled the sound too much, that he'd be unable to wake the room's occupant. The second set he didn't finish. Crouched on the sill, shivering and dripping blood into the alley below, he still tried to smile when he saw the familiar, but squinting, face peer out past the drapes. He expected shock, but received only sheer incomprehension. He motioned for the glass to be raised in the old sash, glad that this was not a modern building. It took three tries before the recently-sleeping Bruce managed to open the window, and Logan half-climbed, half-fell, gratefully into the room.

"What the..", was all the musician managed to say before Logan started talking, and talking fast.  
  
"Don't ask questions right now, kid. I'll answer any you got, but later. Close that window, close the drape, close everything. Turn a light on. And then just help me get this damn thing outta my back."  
  
He heard Bruce start to try again, to say 'who the fuck are you', or words to that effect, but his voice was clearly familiar and cut through the last of the man's sleepy confusion. The lights flared.

"Logan! Shit. Uh, ok. Ya know. Um"

He was glad he'd been in civilian clothes for a city job. He didn't need a distinctive uniform colouring this interaction. He crawled his way over to the rumpled bed, and removed his jacket. He'd already taken off his thick plaid shirt, and used strips to bind his back and try and stem the bleed. The inside lining of his jacket was beginning to show dark spots, the blood flow had obviously increased during his exertions to get to this safe space.

"You need a hospital. Uh, that.."

"It's a bullet wound. I never told you what I did, but you kinda knew it was nothing nice. Don't pretend otherwise. Now, I don't got any friends in this city, and I think maybe the guys I'm working with have got something to do with this here incident." Logan was unbinding the cloth wrapping his mid-section, kneeling on the edge of the bed. "I need your help. It's not going to be nice. But it will save my life."

He took a deep breath as the last of the cloth ripped away from the drying blood on his back, taking some hair with it. He turned to the white-faced young man, so unprepared for this to be happening, wearing only his underwear and a singlet. Logan suddenly realised that he was damned lucky the kid was alone. It hadn't even occurred to him to check. The situation was clearly getting urgent: his ability to think was seriously impaired.

"You gonna do that? I don't have anyone else to ask."

"Yeah," came the shaky response. "Ok. So, uh, what?"

"Well, this is going to get weird fast. So, I want you to know that I trust you. I like you. That's why I am here. Hope you trust me. Because, well, shit is definitely weird."   
  
Bruce had made his way to the other side of the bed, and was pulling on a pair of jeans. He nodded, his face tense and bloodless.   
  
"I need you to pull the bullet out. Usually, you'd need pliers or something. We don't have time. I'm losing blood. So, I am going to cut a channel to the bullet and I need you to grab it with your hand."

Bruce looked like he might never talk again. His eyes were wide and his jaw slack. Logan knew that look well.

"Go puke if you need to. Drink some water, splash it on your face. Whatever. But do it fast. I need you here buddy."  
  
The musician closed his eyes, took and deep breath, and nodded. 

"Ok, and now for the weirdest part. I don't exactly carry a knife. I have these." Though it hurt a hell of a lot more to let the blade cut through that way, Logan slid the claws out from above his knuckles slowly. Only on his right hand. He was relieved when his friend didn't faint. Possibly, the guy had moved through shock and out the other side into a kind of numb trance. Good, that might make him tractable. "Once I make the cut, you gotta move as fast as you can, because. Well. I'll just start healing back up." 

Logan prayed that was true. He also prayed that this guy he was trusting was up to the task. He didn't have time to prep him any further. He laid himself across the corner of the bed, using his feet and left arm to anchor himself to the floor. He reached behind his own back with his right hand and, feeling with his finger tips for the original entry point, positioned his blade. Gritting his teeth against each other, Logan plunged his own claw into the flesh below the current wound, and cut swiftly and deeply upwards. He heard retching, and cursed internally. This was not going to work. The kid was too green, a civilian with no experience of the horror of war or real violence.

He was shocked when he felt the palm placed flat against his back. The guy was shaking, and attempting to steady himself rather than Logan but, with a groan, he did slowly begin to work his other hand into the bloody ravine Logan had carved into his own flesh. 

"Good. Make it fast, if you can. Up and to the left." He tried to speak clearly, but through clenched jaws it was hard.  
  
The feel of a hand moving inside his body, Logan didn't even have words for. He imagined that being eaten would feel somewhat similar; a live, wriggling, invasion. But the hand grasped something that wasn't him, he felt fingers flex and withdraw. A hand covered in his blood dropped a misshapen mass of metal onto the floor in his eyeline. It was over. He could already feel his flesh kitting itself back together, the barrier that had prevented it removed. With his eyes closed in relief and exhaustion, his awareness of the world around him came flooding back. The sheets damp with sweat and blood below him, the ugly carpeting in front of his face, and the unfamiliar palm that was stuck to his back with sweat. He could hear the laboured breathing of the man who had just saved his life, and was still leaning over him.

"How the hell do you do that?" Bruce sounded himself again, quiet and nervous, but out of his fugue state. "You won't even have a scar will you? Like, there aren't any."

Logan pushed himself off the floor, and stood slowly. His only friend backed away. He looked down, and resheathed the claws.

"I'm a mutant. Right? I have the claws, I have better senses that yer average human. I heal real well. So well, that, hell, I don't have any clue how old I really am. But it's old. My memories are scrambled, sure, but I know a few things from a long time ago, and it's not from watching TV." He broke off to breath. This was more words strung together at once than he'd said in months. "You gotta bathroom here?"

Bruce nodded, and then glanced at the watery stain on the carpet of his own puke.   
  
"I wouldn't worry about that, they probably expect worse from the rock'n'roll lifestyle." Logan limped to the bathroom door. "I'm gonna wash this gore away, clean the wound. Then, I guess you want some answers. If not, ok. I'll go and not bother you again. I appreciate the help though. I saved your hide, you saved mine. We're even."

Logan came out the bathroom after the shower half expecting all manner of people - hotel managers, police, a vigilante mob of other band members. Instead, he found Bruce sat in an armchair, a few empty mini bar miniatures on the table beside him. He'd been slumped back staring at the ceiling, but at the sound of the bathroom door, he leaned forward with his arms resting along his thighs. Logan had brought the spare towels out of the bathroom, and used them to pad between the mattress and the sheets, to try and mop up a little of the mess. He dropped a hand towel over the puddle of bile too, the smell was distracting, and handed a damp washcloth to Bruce, who seemed to have blanked out the blood on his own hand.

"I thought I knew who you were man. Ya know? You're a stand up guy, a guy to sink a beer with. And. That was good, ya know. And I want to know, like, if any of that's real. Like, anything at all."

"Yes. And, no." Logan went to the mini-bar himself. "I'm a monster. I'm the thing parents tell their kids about, right? Claws, and fangs, and can't be killed."  
  
He stopped to down the little bottle of whiskey.  
  
"But I'm not, or I don't want to be. I'm Logan, that is my name, as far as I know. I don't kill people because I like it. Not that getting paid to do it is noble. I ain't saying that. I try to work for the good guys. I'm just not sure who they are anymore."

"Is anybody? Nobody's got a job. You can't trust the president. We start wars all over the place, and for what, ya know?" Bruce was nodding as he talked, the rhythm of his own words counting out his agreement with Logan's own argument. "Can't you just stop? Killing people at all? Like. There aren't many jobs, but..."  
  
"I don't think you walk away from what I do. I think that's what this, " he picked up the remains of the bullet, "was all about. They think I might, someday. And I can't. I might not have a good memory, but I know who they are. That scares them. Because I'm good. I'm the best."

"So, you're the best at what you do, and what you do best isn't very nice?"  
  
Logan snorted what was almost a laugh;

"I like that. But don't put it in a song!" He drew the curtain at the window aside. It was still pitch dark, and the snow was coming down steadily. "I should get out of here, before it gets light. I've caused you enough trouble already." He reached for his jacket.  
  
"No. Your back. It's still, uh, healing. You need to sleep. And, ya know, you need more clothes than that in Toronto." Bruce got up, and went to rummage in a large messy suitcase. "I might have something but, like, your shoulders? You should probably be talking to the big man."

He was not being rejected, he was not a freak here. He was himself, and he had a friend who would help him. Bruce was talking, in that gentle mumble of his, working through the craziness he'd been lumbered with and trying to solve the problems it presented. For the first time in years, Logan would let someone else deal. He dropped the jacket he was about to put on, and walked over to the bed. With his head right up against the headboard, his feet barely touched the damp, bloody patch down on the right-hand corner. He was on the verge of unconsciousness, when he felt the roll of the mattress as someone sat down on the other side of the bed.

"I'm only giving up half this thing. Ya know, I've got to get some sleep. And that chair, well, that chair"  
  
"S'Fine. It's your bed."  
  
Logan now found he was overly aware of the presence of the other man. He'd been so close to sleep, he didn't think sharing the mattress would make any difference at all, even if the guy snored like a wolf. But, somehow, it made a difference just knowing he was there. When the breathing from the left side of the mattress flattened into a sleeping pattern, Logan rolled over. He breathed deeply the familiar smell, and felt a strange need to reach out and confirm that there really was someone else there. He didn't. He just closed his eyes and adjusted the frequency of his breathing to match his bedmate's. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so close to another person.


	4. 1982 - Open All Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All good things must come to an end.

All over the US, on dark winter nights, Logan spilt his guts. In unlit hotel rooms, the truth runs out of him in messy disjointed pile ups. He arrived without warning, usually through the window. Sometimes, Bruce simply woke up to the smell of a cigar and found his strange friend prowling his bedroom. He’s a good listener, and he likes stories. It’s part of his gift after all, to be a great story-teller in his turn. Logan appreciates this. In the few questions that get asked, the odd comment or observation, Bruce has picked apart the half-truth, the convenient truth, through to the reality underneath. Logan reckons he doesn’t need a shrink to analyse him, but he needed a friend to tell him where to get off. And this the musician is very good at.  
  
There’s a reason his bandmates call him ‘the boss’. He can say ‘fuck you’ and mean it. He will go to the wire for what he believes in, and he’s not accepting anything less than the best that anyone can offer him. He’s seen Logan’s compassion, his will to survive, and he’s not willing to accept lazy half-truths and self-pity. He’s not going to let him drink himself unconscious either, not when he can help it. Those times he saw the steely glint of metal around the grasped whiskey bottle, he shrugged it away and went to bed;  
  
“I’m not listening to drunken rambling. You wanna get that blasted, like, fine. Sleep here if you need to, but shut the hell up.”

Logan likes this fearlessness. He likes having someone willing to curse him out, and hold him to a standard he no longer expects of himself. Those nights, after the fire’s run through, he sits watching his buddy sleep. Sometimes he falls asleep himself, either in an armchair, or lacking that, on the other side of the bed. That someone is willing to sleep in the same room as him, despite the drinking and the anger, is nothing short of a miracle to him.  Logan can feel the years of rage lifting from him. He’s drinking less, thinking more. He’s even reading a little in the downtime that he gets. The world is a better place than he thought it was, and just maybe people are capable of more good than he usually gives them credit for.

During the spring months, when the tour moves to Europe. Logan feels an almost physical ache in missing the only person he is willing to call a friend to their face. But, still, the bottle of whiskey beside his bed drops its level steadily rather than suddenly. He’s concerned by reports of Bruce’s exhaustion, but he knows the man gives his all every night on stage and then gets up and gives everything he has to his friends, his colleagues, the press. He wonders, just what is left of Bruce for Bruce. Little and less, it seems.

When they meet again in Jersey in the fall, Logan’s no longer sneaking into practice a secular confession. He just wants to take Bruce out for a beer, but the Boss is too busy.  The tour is over, dis-banded quite literally. But the notebook pile grows, seemingly daily. Logan reads some of them, sneaking down to keep an eye on the friend whose too busy to drink a beer. Technically AWOL, he tells James Hudson that he has to go help a friend. Hudson says that he’s glad he’s got one. Logan knows he shouldn’t track a friend, but something in the younger man’s jittery manner of late makes him nervous. Instead of sleeping, the guy drives, night after night, the same route through Freehold. Always slowing and idling at the same spot, the same house. The lyrics are back to bleak again. Gone are the pretty girls, the fast cars. Back comes the down-at-heel, the restless, the loner at 2am on the highway.

He recognises his own language, his own words in the notes. “The only thing that I got, s'been bothering me my whole life.” But Springsteen has taken the self-pity and the drunken rambling, and made a dark poetry. These are songs to be sung with a single guitar and a bottle of hooch. These have no place for a sing-a-long riff, an upbeat sax solo. This broken kid, this guy battling his past, Logan had lost track of him. The tension between the gentle, thoughtful nature and the negativity of the life that he’d led, that he’d seen, it had drawn him in. And then, in good times, he’d forgotten it; seen what he needed to see - a helpmate, a caregiver. But here again is the brother in arms Logan’d been expecting the first time he’d set out to find the guy, and buy him a beer. He’d come full circle, because here he was. Wandering the night, as lost as the Wolverine himself.

Finally, Logan forces a meeting. He is a little disconcerted by the man’s appearance. Bruce maybe taller, and Logan wider, but the mirror effect is unsettling. The sideburns with their sharp turn down the cheek, almost a 45 degree angle, so familiar to man who shaved the same line himself.

“You need to stop hiding from people, bub.” He was going to let aspects of personal grooming rest. “That gets real serious, real fast.”

“I haven’t got time to listen to your shit right now.”  
  
“No, I got my shit sorted. And I mostly gotta thank you for that. Now, I have time to listen to yours.” Standing in the doorway to the house, Logan spread his feet another foot apart to block the frame, and leant his hand against the jamb. “You just say when. Not the pretty stuff that ends up on the records, not the stuff you’ve been over and over, til it sounds just so. No, the rant that comes straight from the bottom of the bottle. Hell, I’ll provide the bottle if need be.”

As the bleak and lonely music is poured onto a four track recorder by day, by night bleak and lonely introspection pours out of its author. This is not the guy who fell asleep on the sofa as they played Woodie Guthrie records til they wore out. The guy who trusts his friends, and leaves his door open for them. This is a guy who lets a mentally unstable government operative , a permanently armed assassin, sleep in his hotel room because he no longer cares if he wakes up. It’s a dark, cold start to a new year. Logan was simply expecting to be a sounding board, an impartial observer. But he can’t. That spring, those late night sessions setting the world, and the past, to rights act like a crucible. Something burns away, and what’s left is stronger, finer. But what’s burnt away is pretence, is all the barriers that make social graces possible. It’s fitting, that as the signs of spring start to appear, so too does hope. Bruce takes his homemade demos into the studio. And whilst many of those dark ballads are destined for a solo album, new sessions with the band also start new songs developing. 

And what’s gone, Logan becomes only too aware of, one morning in Bruce’s kitchen. The phone rings unexpectedly early; Bruce narrows his eyes and shot his lower jaw forward at the interruption. A slightly pugnacious gesture, at odds with his usually relaxed manner.

“Well, that’s new,” Logan thought. “And that’s mine.”

Logan swept the once familiar appearance of the man in front of him. Noting, not for the first time, the length of the sideburns and the width of the upper arms. It’s a performance, a calculated performance. Like so much of him now, so much on stage and now off. The damaged, broken young man was patching himself into a coherent whole, using the materials he had available. His friend Jon leant him books, had taught him politics. The band gave him control, made him ‘the Boss.’ He would not become his own shiftless father. Logan realised he was trying to pull apart a man like a patchwork quilt. Wondering which bits of himself were stitched, Frankenstein-like, into the persona. But it doesn’t work like that. After all, he now saw, he carried away a piece of Bruce every time they met. He was reconstituting his own self from begged and borrowed parts, just as much.   

They’d come together heading in opposite directions, Logan seeking faith and Springsteen seemingly losing his. They’d patched each other up and now, with a vow to remember, they were going to drift apart again. The man in the bandana was now Bruce Springsteen, in capital letters, neon signage, tour headliner terms. He was what he needed to be to succeed, and he needed to succeed above all else. And so did Logan. He’s not going to spend the rest of his life taking one contract after another, becoming another government assassin or an amoral mercenary. He’s started paying attention to the bigger picture, and eventually there’ll be an opportunity. An out.  
  
And that’s another reason to walk away. He’s a marked man among his associates. He’s not going to risk another man’s life just because he likes drinking a beer with him. Back when it was life or death, for both of them, the risk went both ways – target or suicide risk, there’s little to choose between those two states of existence. They have something to live for now, there’s going to be a future. But it won’t be together. It never was going to work out that way. And that’s all right.

Bruce returned to the table from the door, and began gathering the papers, picks, capos and other paraphernalia that were scattered around the plates and glasses.

“I gotta go.”

He’s not looking at the man he’s speaking to. His movements are sharp and purposeful.

“I get it. You got things you gotta be doing.” Logan smiled encouragingly, even though he knew it was a performance without an audience. “I better get moving myself. See you round, bub.”  
  
At the door, Logan stops, and then walks back behind Bruce’s chair. The musician pauses in his paper shuffling, but his shoulders don’t tense. Logan bends forward, and for the first time, wraps his arms around his friend. His forearm is gripped suddenly, and forcefully, but it is held in place not wrenched away. He knows a moment or two of perfect stillness, where everything as it is, is exactly as it should be. And then he walks out without another word or glance.  
  
They’d said everything they needed to say. But, years later, when the next album went platinum, a postcard with no stamp was found amongst the mail at the Beverly Hills mansion Bruce shared with his new wife. On the front was a maple leaf and a small, bear-like creature. The back simply said, “You did good, kid. X”

*********************************

Epilogue 

 

1994 – Brilliant Disguise

Logan hates the arenas in which all concerts seem to be staged nowadays. He hasn’t seen a live show in over ten years, precisely for this reason. He realises that he missed the energy the band gives off playing live. He wishes, however, that the assholes standing near him would shut up. It costs enough to come out to these things, why the hell would you yammer your way through it? The roaring of so many voices talking and singing, the smell of so many bodies. Logan feels like his olfactory senses are just going to pack in and shut down any second under the onslaught. He kinda wishes they would. He’s not entirely sure why he came to put himself through this. Nostalgia? Self-pity? Standing high up on the side of some tiered seating to stare down, from what feels like half a klik away, to where the band appear the size of hummingbirds. It just makes him feel even further from the man he used to call ‘buddy’. 

  
It’s hot, close to the big stage lights. Logan never exactly feels cold, and surrounded by all the dancing bodies, even in the open air of the summer night, he’s too warm in a plaid shirt. Ah, what the hell. He peels it off, conscious that in his jeans and singlet he looks like he a damned tribute act. The girl behind gets halfway through a whistle at the well-muscled shoulders in front of her before the owner’s steely glare shuts her down. He packs the shirt down small into the satchel at his feet. He’s not been paying any attention to the stage, and is surprised when he hears not music, but a question; ‘are you having a good time?!’ The Boss is addressing his audience. The hesitant, slightly dreamy conversational style Logan remembers is gone, the softness of diction too. It jars slightly in his ears, this swaggering bombast emanating from the stage. But at least it sounds as though he is having fun, like he’s found his place. He looks down at the victorious superstar, with his sleeveless shirt, heavily muscled arms, and still those damned sideburns. The band is already preparing to charge into another, no doubt high-octane, number. Gone were the days of rambling onstage soliloquies about fathers, sons, and regret. Shaking his head, Logan raises his hat to the boy he once knew, and the man he’d since become seemed to be looking straight up at him. He lowers the high crown slowly, crushing it over the hair that seems to grow straight up out of his head, no matter what he’s tried.  

  
He turns away, fighting his way up concrete steps past the venue’s safety staff. He reaches the dark exit ramp just as he hears a distinctive slow beat from the stage. ‘You bastard,’ he thinks. He leans his back against the cool concrete, and screws his eyes shut. He even grins at the line ‘you’re all dressed up in blue’. Snorting with derision at his own sentimentality, he pushes himself off the wall. Tougher than the rest. Ain’t that the truth. 

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to greasylake.org, for more accurate Springsteen timelines than I could have imagined were possible. Right down to the set lists!


End file.
